10 historic hotels in the U.S. with fascinating former lives

You can sleep surprisingly well in the slammer at The Liberty, a Luxury Collection Hotel, which occupies the former Charles Street Jail. Built in 1851, the Gothic Revival fortress operated as a jail for roughly 140 years, holding inmates including mobster Whitey Bulger, anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti and former Boston mayor James Michael Curley, who was elected to another term while behind bars. When the Boston property became a hotel in 2007, plenty of evidence was left behind. The soaring 90-foot rotunda, once a vantage point for guards watching the cell blocks, now serves as the lobby, with original cells and catwalks still visible throughout the building. CLINK. incorporates remnants of the jail into its dining room, while cocktail lounge Alibi occupies the former drunk tank and lines its walls with celebrity mugshots. You can even grab a drink at CATWALK, set along one of the original jail walkways. Even the rooms get in on the joke with “solitary” do-not-disturb signs and other playful nods to doing time.

Address: 215 Charles St, Boston, MA 02114

Look up when you enter The LINE DC and its past becomes pretty obvious. The Adams Morgan hotel is housed in a former church built in 1912, and many of its most dramatic ecclesiastical details survived the transformation. Soaring 60-foot vaulted ceilings, stained-glass windows, original pews, millwork and enormous copper entry doors remain, while the former sanctuary has become a sprawling lobby and gathering space. One of the cleverest remnants hangs overhead, as pipes from the Washington, D.C. church’s original organ have been repurposed into a chandelier. It’s a hotel conversion that lets the architecture do most of the storytelling.

Address: 1770 Euclid St NW, Washington, DC 20009

Before the Pearl District became one of San Antonio’s buzziest neighborhoods, beer was serious business here. Hotel Emma occupies a 19th-century brewhouse that once formed part of the sprawling Pearl brewery complex, and its industrial bones are still everywhere. During the restoration, old brewery equipment was salvaged and turned into furniture and decorative features rather than carted off as scrap. Today, the 146-room property pairs that machinery, brick and steel with polished contemporary interiors, a 3,700-volume library and several drinking and dining venues. Don’t miss the atmospheric Sternewirth Bar, an especially fitting place to raise a glass to the building’s first act.

Address: 136 E Grayson St, San Antonio, TX 78215

This might be the most “Wisconsin” hotel imaginable: Seven Acre Dairy Company sits in tiny Paoli, about 20 minutes south of Madison, inside a former dairy factory built by local farmers in 1888. For nearly a century, the plant produced Swiss cheese and sweet-cream butter before closing in 1980. Today, the restored complex includes an eight-room inn, restaurant and café, plus a working micro-dairy that once again churns out butter and soft-serve ice cream on-site. Look closely, and you’ll spot reminders of its first life, from marks left by old cheese vats to faded circles where enormous 400-pound wheels of Swiss were once made; even the lobby chandelier incorporates vintage milk bottles.

Address: 6858 Paoli Rd, Belleville, WI 53508

The old firehouse pole may be gone, but you won’t have much trouble figuring out what The Lantern used to be. Located in South Carolina’s capital city, this boutique stay incorporates the city’s former Central Fire Station, built between 1949 and 1951 and used as fire department headquarters until 1994. The former engine bay—where fire trucks once rolled in and out—is now part of the hotel’s public space and home to restaurant Ladder 13, with the original fire doors still incorporated into the setting. The coolest conversion, however, is overhead: The station’s six-story fire-training tower still punctuates the skyline, only now it houses two guest rooms and a four-story suite connected by its own internal staircase.

Address: 1001 Senate St, Columbia, SC 29201

The aptly named Fordson Hotel is housed in a century-old former Ford Motor Company assembly plant. Today, the Oklahoma City building still pays homage to its factory past, with soaring ceilings, exposed steel beams, large warehouse windows and other original industrial details throughout its 135 rooms and public spaces. Contemporary art now fills the former factory, adding a hint of sophistication without erasing the building’s blue-collar roots. Add three bars and restaurants, a sparkling swimming pool and design-forward public spaces, and you’ve got one of the best places to stay in all of Oklahoma.

Address: 900 W Main St, Oklahoma City, OK 73106

Few New York hotels can claim a backstory involving Shakespeare, NYU, Edgar Allan Poe and more than a century of office workers. Long before The Beekman began welcoming guests in 2016, its Lower Manhattan site was home to the Chapel Street Theatre, where Hamlet was performed for the first time in New York City, and later Clinton Hall, where New York University held its first classes in 1832. (Poe later published The Broadway Journal from Clinton Hall.) The building you see today came later: Constructed in the 1880s as Temple Court, it was one of the city’s early fireproof office buildings, housing everyone from lawyers to publishers before sitting vacant for more than a decade. Today, you can grab a cocktail beneath its spectacular nine-story Victorian atrium, framed by restored cast-iron balconies and topped by a pyramidal skylight.

Address: 123 Nassau St, New York, NY 10038

Only in Louisville could “former disco ball factory” be a historically appropriate hotel backstory. Before becoming The Myriad, the building spent time as both a local telephone company and a disco ball factory—a particularly fitting résumé in a city famous for producing the sparkly dance-floor fixtures (yes, really). The 65-key hotel now leans into the lively spirit of its Highlands neighborhood rather than recreating the factory floor, with colorful interiors, outdoor gathering spaces, a saltwater pool and three bars and restaurants.

Address: 900 Baxter Ave, Louisville, KY 40204

The million-dollar Golden Gate Bridge view is only half the story at Cavallo Point. The Sausalito hotel sits within Fort Baker, a former U.S. Army post tucked directly below the bridge on the northern edge of San Francisco Bay. The military remained here through World War II and the Cold War, and many of the century-old Colonial Revival buildings that once housed Army officers and their families have since been converted into hotel rooms and suites. Today, the setting is decidedly more leisurely: Guests come for bay views, hiking trails, a spa and cooking school, all within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Address: 601 Murray Cir, Sausalito, CA 94965

Before it was welcoming guests, this Indianapolis landmark was filling Coca-Cola bottles—millions of them. Bottleworks Hotel occupies part of the former Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Indianapolis, an elaborate Art Deco factory complex that grew into the world’s largest Coca-Cola bottling plant by 1950. This was no bare-bones industrial box: The plant was decked out with gleaming white terra cotta, colorful tilework, brass details and terrazzo floors, many of which survived its transformation into a 139-room hotel. The rest of the former factory has found new life, too, as the sprawling Bottleworks District, home to restaurants, shops and a food hall. Consider it one very glamorous second act for a soda factory.

Address: 850 Massachusetts Ave Ste 100, Indianapolis, IN 46204